Articles that connect directly to our online exhibitions — companion pieces that expand on themes, explore related topics, and offer reflections around the subjects covered in curated displays.
William Wallace deployed the parallel column as a weapon against Crockett in November 1894. This article turns that same tool around — applying systematic comparison to Scott and Crockett’s use of the Ballangiech tradition. The results demonstrate not theft but craft: the systematic transformation of inherited material bearing one writer’s singular stamp.
In 1894, under public accusation of plagiarism, Crockett argued that drawing on Galloway folk tradition was what all writers did — Scott included. Four years later he made the same argument in fiction. This article examines ‘The Goodman of Ballangiech’ as a masterclass in literary inheritance: the same tradition as Scott, transformed by an unmistakeable hand.
What happens when you actually sit down and read ‘The Goodman of Ballangiech’? A personal response to the story — its humour, its inverted social hierarchy, its vivid domestic comedy — and one footnote about a Galloway place name that tells you everything about Crockett’s relationship to his native ground.
Discover how S.R. Crockett’s fiction preserves Galloway’s lost woodland heritage and offers prescient environmental insights for our own time.
Comparative analysis of three S.R. Crockett short stories spanning 1895-1912 reveals his literary versatility.